Dogs are brighter than cats, no really

Boffins, or scientists as they are better known, have been giving pets IQ tests and have dispelled the myth that cats are brighter than dogs.

For years, humanity has assumed that its best friend was a bit dim because it followed owners around even when there was no chance of a snack.

While someone might be homeless with a dog on a string, a cat would have disappeared years ago as the chances of food and a nice warm face to sleep on dried up.

Apparently that is nothing to do with intelligence. In fact, say the boffins, from Oxford University, dogs evolved bigger brains because friendly, social mammals need more grey matter than solitary, aloof ones.

The boffins charted the evolution of mammal brains over the last 60 million years – from a few million years after the dinosaurs became extinct to the modern day.

Apparently they have discovered that there is a strong link between the size of a brain relative to an animal’s body and how sociable that creature is.

Whales, dogs, dolphins and humans tend to have much larger brains compared to their bodies while loners, such as tigers, domestic cats and rhinos, have less brain cells in relation to their body size.

Professor Robin Dunbar, co-author of the study, said that it took smarts to handle social situations.

The study which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which we get for the “spot the brain cell” competition, found that the brains of monkeys expanded the most over evolutionary history, followed by horses, dolphins, camels and dogs.

Mammals with big brains tend to live in stable groups, because it is more demanding mentally.

Co-author Dr Susanne Shultz said: ‘Dogs have always been regarded as the more social animals while cats like to get on with their own thing alone”.

Apparently it is humanity’s ability to get on with each other that has helped it dominate the planet. Give me a sabre toothed tiger rather than some moochy spaniel any day.